Off-Nominal - 202 - Rapidly Adjusting (with Adrian Beil)

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Anthony is joined by Adrian Beil of NASASpaceflight to talk about the recent mayhem at Starbase, and to kick around European space policy topics in the run up to the ESA Ministerial later this year.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 202 - Rapidly Adjusting (with Adrian Beil) - YouTubeFollowing the Loss of Ship 36, SpaceX now Focuses on Rebuilding Masseys - NASASpaceFlight.comJack Beyer on X: “Close up slow motion footage of the unexpected event(s) during Northrop Grumman’s BOLE DM-1 stb test today.”Northrop Grumman tests SLS Block 2 BOLE booster in Utah; nozzle issue seen - NASASpaceFlight.comESA studying impacts of proposed NASA budget cuts - SpaceNewsESA moving ahead with ‘resilience from space’ satellite imaging program - SpaceNewsFollow AdrianAdrian Beil (@BCCarCounters) / TwitterAdrian Beil, Author at NASASpaceFlight.comFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine, start. Oh, Adrian, hello. I'm glad that you're here with me. Somebody that's a legitimate professional in this streaming industry. How you doing, buddy? Doing good, doing good. Absolutely looking forward to talk about. I will just say everything,

because I think the space industry lately has made it very easy for space reporters to talk about a lot. There's sort of one story, and at the same time there's about a million because that story impacts everything ever, and it all somehow is interrelated. That's where we've ended up. So on that note, I've been,

this might be one of them shows that I'm like, hey, listen, this is both a Miko and an off-nominal at the same time because I keep little lists of like, here's what I should talk about. Jake and I typically have this little calendar of like, here's what's coming up on off-nominal. I keep a little lists for Miko.

It's the same topics right now. I'm like, I need somebody from the European continent to come on and help me, because there's a lot of European policy, wrangling that is, this is what, every three years are ministerials, right? So it's, uh, in the run up, the six months leading up to it, there's just like a lot of people talking and positioning and there's a lot going on. And then they're also angry about American politics at the same time and then mad at SpaceX. And you are kind of a one of one who's like into the

SpaceX things, obsessed with Starbase, European politics is there. So you've got it all going on. And I'm glad that, uh, that you're here to help me sort through it. absolutely it feels like i'm very much in the middle of a lot lately so i i agree that i agree with that assessment yeah um first off it's uh late where you are so you i hope brought something fun to drink but i so i thought a long time what i should drink and then i remember we have a beer in germany that it's literally called astra racete which means astra rocket so i just found that funny that's That's all the story behind this, behind the fact that it's called Astra Rocket. Wow.

Yeah, that's it. Did they know? Did you inform them, like, what the whole situation is? I feel like you should reach out. I feel like we should reach out, but honestly, I don't have any more backstory to this. That's the fact that I think that's an incredibly funny coincidence, and it's apparently a beer infused with citrus and vodka. So, yay.

Wow. Infused with vodka. That's intense. Yeah, I'm not sure. Definitely, that would have you leave your house power sliding, for sure. That would definitely fit and be on brand for that. I hope nothing power slides today here. Like, that's my personal hope.

I hope this house stays where it is in horizontal and vertical axis. I'm getting. Oh, I'm drinking a victory prima pills, by the way. It is a German-style Pilsner. So that was relevant. but it's delicious. It's a good one. Nice.

Cheers. Cheers, man. It's, I don't know which end you want to start here. There's been, I was going to say there's been some good off nominees in the last week, but I don't know that any of them have the Spirit of Wimsy needed to make it. I mean, Starship just blowing up. Epic explosion, certainly. Yeah.

Not, no Spirit of Wimsy. We're past, we're beyond the era of Wimsy for Starship. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's like, I feel like it's almost. I'm not sure of normal. I feel like of nominees always have like a bit of a stupid character next to that. Yes. And I feel like that

test was just like, I mean, in the essence it was just the fail test. It lacks the funny stupid part a bit. No whimsy at all. Just pretty depressing. Yeah. Reminiscence of, I think we were talking about this on the

pre-show last week, right? Remincent of like SN4 or something where they were testing and they had that, was it a methane leak or something that then the entire field ignited and there was this kind of two-stage explosion happening incredibly energetic yeah and do i don't think so like do we know why there was that second even more explosive aspect to the explosion i got to pull up the video where we're talking about this uh for for this test for ship 36 yeah there was there was the initial explosion and then there was one that everything really started flying i don't know if that was a tank on the ground

that also got hit at the same time and that was the secondary explosion but the second part was crazy. I think it's the locks tank. I want to say it's because I think you see in the clip how there's like a part of the tank that just falls down. I think it's the locks tank just hitting the ground and probably also part of the methane tank

and it's just like emitting a lot of log because this test is relatively low on methane. And while this explosion looked spectacular, it's not really like that huge of a force. It's more like a giant fireball that happened. We can see that now in the aftermath. We flew over it. I know others also did. And the damage is relatively calm versus what it initially looked like. Of course, the test stand is toast and a lot of piping and everything around it is toast. But besides that, I mean, honestly, there's material like

400, 500 meters away from the test. That is perfectly fine. So in terms of energy, kind of lower than SN4, I think. all right there's always a silver lining there um it's it's interesting now i'm trying to pull up the uh yeah your flyover there's some videos you're tweet now what yesterday or something um yeah there's there's uh i feel like like everybody as soon as this happened got into the air yeah and decided to uh just yeah yeah i mean there you can see it i i mean look at it it's it's not it's not this like it's not apocalyptic by any no it's yeah it's just a problem that once again they have to re-figure out all the details, right?

And we know, like, putting a stand there, that's one thing, but all the cables, all the piping, everything, that's going to take time. Yeah, so now that we've kind of, we talked about the Sunshed last week with Eric Berger and Casey Dreyer, but that was so close to the immediate aftermath that I don't think there was really anything that we could glean other than, like, this is bad in a horrible year,

and vibes are bad. Now we're a couple days out. We got a couple of tweets from Milan on it or whatever, and maybe we've seen some hardware moving around. Do you have a good sense for what the game plan is from here? Like, obviously, setback, but is there, they have a lot of sites down in Texas. Is there, you know, what is your expected, like, traffic pattern here

for what they're going to do? I don't think SpaceX has a traffic plan yet. I feel like they're still in cleanup. I feel like that's going to be quite some time again. They have to do, like, assessment of the place first and understand what they have to repair. from what we can tell they're still in the cleanup process. I would still think this is a very bad year overall,

and I think SpaceX people probably would agree with me. I honestly feel like there's a lot of decisions that SpaceX right now is to make. They have, of course, two more flights on their block to chain of vehicles. They have them block free coming up, which will result in a lot of changes in their hardware anyway. They already started adjusting

massies before this test and now they well they have to repair it and adjusted it during this test as well yeah yeah they did rapidly adjusted test side which is funny because it happened now two times that they rapidly adjusted something they also wanted to

adjust in the future but I think there's a very high chance that they will fly the remaining block two vehicles because the issues they had are not necessarily blocked two related. One of the three failures is block two. That was the actual the resonance issue.

But the other one was the Raptor failure. That's that that's not block two. That's Raptor. The other one, this test was a failed COPV. That's also not that's not block two. That could also have that. Yeah. Yeah. So are you really gaining something by skipping? You're just carrying these issues that apparently you have right now all the way to the next generation. So I feel like there's a good chance they will fly it and remaining two vehicles. How they will fly it and how they will test it, that's the interesting part, because Massey's toast. And obviously we'll get a new nomenclature out of this. It'll be a block 2.5, which will be really nice for the block trackers out there. There's always a new one,

just when you think it stabilizes. Or when they retroactively declare something as block two that wasn't block two before. And they're like, no, no, we're totally flying Block 2 boosters and we're like, are you? Because recently you didn't call this Block 2? You're like, I have a spreadsheet that goes all the way back to the original countdowns. And that is not true in spirit of what we're watching here. Yeah, the new, I think we at some point we declared the new Block 3 is the old Block 2 in boosters.

They like re-signed that for some reason. I mean, whatever. It's their internal name assignment and let's be real. Falcon 9 is not any better in terms of names. No, no, no. that's much worse because there's more of them. So do you think that something that's been in my head about this particular failure? I don't know if it's just the visuals of it, but I also think it's something about where in the

life cycle of the vehicle it is. This feels like the pad explosion that happened with Dragon, where you kind of felt like we were over the hump, you know, the delays were there, we finally were flying this thing, they're doing some testing, they got a good schedule forward, and then we get that leaked video after the explosion and it's a tough thing to look at, right? And I feel the same about Starship that you're watching Starship explode. Right? When it's a test tank, you're like, oh, well, it's clearly development hardware.

You're watching numbered, you know, a very high-numbered starship explode. And that's a bad visual that is going to be out there forever and they have to deal with that visual existing. And in the Dragon case, that definitely ratcheted up the intensity, right? They were that far down that program. And it felt like, okay. this got serious, this got really serious now that this happened. If it weren't for the recent troubles at Starship, I would feel exactly the same,

but that's the part that tempers it a little for me. Like, maybe this is different because it's a rough year. And, like, hopefully, we keep waiting for Rock Bottom. Is this, is this it? I hope, because it was for Dragon, and I hope that's the same for Starship here. In a weird way, it fits just into this year so perfectly that I think people are just accepting it happening. But yes, I agree.

I didn't expect this to happen. Like, I didn't expect at this point in the program for an upper stage to explode. Of course, we have way more mature rockets that failed during weird testing in the past. That's not something that is super unusual. But I felt like SpaceX was kind of on the path of like they really needed a win with Starship. They had like a decently okayish flight nine where at least, hey, you got to SICO. it was okay you could sell that and I feel like that this path

this vehicle was really like the one to turn this bad year into a good year and well now you're at least on a like two three four months stand down and I mean at three months to this year we are already somewhere in September maybe October for return to flight that's not gonna really help you to turn this year around and yeah I was surprised

I didn't watch it live I will fully admit It was 5 a.m. my time. And I, I woke up after math. One of us. Yeah. It was like, I actually didn't watch it live. I woke up and I got the AI summary of Discord. And it was, we have like a channel where we talk about,

have stuff behind and as ever. Like people talking about ship 36 explosion. Like, huh? That's not one you want summarized. That's an Apple intelligence summarization failure for sure. Yeah, I was like, I was like, oh, static fire into explosion, that's weird, Apple. Nope. Yeah, yeah, good summary. There's something, that can't be true, but I mean, does this, where is, what's your level of concern though, right? If that's the case, like, has something, because I think for a while there was a lot of storylines you could write. Elon's distracted, it's just where they're at in their life cycle. You can, you can write off a couple, but how many do we need stacked up before you start going, like, something's happening. Because with, I'll give you an example.

The year where Falcon 9 surpassed ULA in flights, it was the same year that ULA was starting to turn pads over for Vulcan, and all of a sudden, every launch they went through had some scrub, one, two, three scrubs. There was that one year where all of a sudden everybody noticed ULA scrubs a lot. And I think looking back, we know that was the year that the workforce adjustments started happening in the run-up to Vulcan, and it clearly presented itself. Is this that year for Starship where the people that are working on it are different,

the, we've had a lot of attrition at SpaceX out to companies that are either founded by SpaceXers or they just naturally progress because they don't want to move to South Texas. Like, I don't know, I was not willing to accept the storyline with a failure or two. Three, four in a row, it's like, it's a lot. I think something is definitely, I think you're either talking about an incredible streak of bad luck because all of these failures are odd, right? Like none of this is like just simple all of these are just weird It's a good question of I still think there's a lot of talent in SpaceX

I think they are still an incredibly Like I mean this company right now next to all of this runs the Falcon 9 program Which is probably one of the most successful programs in How about year last year though? That's true last year But I feel like I feel like this this talent is for sure not gone. However, something at Starship is obviously

not going as they planned. At this point, they lost to the recent failures like, what, eight, ten months? Just gone. That's gone, yeah. The Mars 2026 really looks incredibly unlikely. Almost no roadmap progression, right? You would know the ins and outs more than me,

but the stuff that's been, the top of their hit list, has been the top of the hit list every single flight now. I don't know if any of, and stuff's been redesigned, I'm sure, but there hasn't been a progression of where they're out on the roadmap in that time. Yep.

Yeah, I mean, their goal before this year, when I recently actually did this with some colleagues, I talked about what was our expectation about the Starship this year? And it was like, well, maybe eight to ten flights. Well, not happening. Maybe a ship catch attempt. Well, not happening. What they got was booster reuse.

Props to that. Like, they reflure on a booster. That's cool. Orbital refueling. No, well, not going to get that this year. I mean, it's for sure a setback. And even if you go into these timeline discussions, we are talking about Artemis Free Readiness. We are talking about like moon landing readiness or Mars window next year.

These things are definitely under question. Like, will you make a, will you be able to test orbital refueling until the Mars window next year and get that perfected? I'm not sure. I have my doubts. Somebody in the chat is telling us that we're two dudes hate on SpaceX which hasn't gone well in the past. No, no. Don't misunderstand us.

Like, we are not shifting the goalposts for SpaceX. SpaceX and their outsized efforts shifted their own goalposts to the point where in Adrian's stack of things that happened, yeah, they reflued the booster. That's cool. And I, right? Like that vibe is they'd caught the largest booster that's ever been. And then they reflued it.

And we're like, yeah, that was the easy part. of what you have done previously. You're writing big checks, you've got to cash big checks. And, you know, the fact that they are the outliers levels up the expectations for what they're capable of, and they don't get to play the same game as everyone else because they are that good. This is the role that NASA was in from the space age through, what, the 90s, right? Like, there was a reason that it's not rocket science was the phrase,

because that was like, they were just killing it and they were doing so good, and they were infallible in many ways, except for a, handful of missions. And they were, and even with like JPL at Mars, right? Every time they go to Mars, they're expected to stick that landing. Everyone else on Earth is like, Mars is really hard, seven minutes of terror, we might not make it. JPL shifted the goalposts on Mars. Now they're having their own problems. SpaceX shifted their own goalposts because they did so well. And now they are having those problems. And I think I attribute a lot of it to the fact that Starship is such a grand scale, that everything is so hard and there are so many things to get right that to have

them all come together is like nearly miraculous. And so, you know, is that, I don't know how healthy that is long term. And I don't, unfortunately, I don't see like how to simplify the structure when you're trying to do the holy grail of what spaceflight has always said is, you know, where we're all heading. And it is this complex. That's a log jam I can't find my way out of. Everything below exceptional would be not good enough for this program. Because Starship, I think we both I agree, Starship is probably one of the hardest programs to ever be attempted in launch, like launch vehicle history. It's nobody besides SpaceX right now would even have the ability to attempt it because there's so many problems on the way that you would just bankrupt a company on the path. In the context of this, though, this year's not exceptional.

And if you say they need to be exceptional to get this program running, 2025 is not exceptional. I doubt any SpaceXer will go on any show and tell us, yeah, 2025 great year for Starship. Morale really high. We're doing great. Yeah, like, everybody cheering. Like, no. Yeah, and I don't, this isn't me being doom and gloom, right? I still am one of those people that I'm a when starship, not an if starship, and there's people

that are now, that used to be when, that are now if. And I get that. I totally get that that this shifts your perspective on that. And at the same time, I'm thinking of like the hero's journey aspect of this, right? Like every great story in this, in aerospace or tech or these fields that we're interested in have those moments. There's a chapter in the book, right? Eric Berger's chapter in this book is going to be epic because there's going to be probably two or three chapters of 2025. There's always that moment in these programs of like epic downfall.

And you hope. And what our job is to figure out, like, is this a group that's, capable of pulling the nose up, right? Same way that NASA science right now is dealing with budgetary issues and program management struggles and execution issues and vision issues, will they be able to pull the nose up is the thing that you try to suss out. It's not unexpected that there are down periods in development, especially ones as lofty as this.

So that part's not the surprise. It's just like, damn, it's not, they haven't pulled the nose up yet. Are they in a total stall or are they, you know, trying to pick up some speeds to get some lift under the wings? That's the question. And here's the thing that I'm curious on, as you look at the roadmap, right, there's a temptation probably to say, all right, well, we're way behind. It's kind of like a gambler's mentality, right?

Like, I got to win my losses back. So I'm going to double down and bet bigger and bigger and bigger and lose more and more money. Are they going to continue to add stuff to the next flight to try to get ahead of the roadmap? Or, I mean, so far they've been pretty committed to like, let's refly maybe one or two things. updated based on what we know, but we're still aiming for that same thing. Are they going to stick with that, or do you think that, I guess that's what you're getting at with like the V3 jump, that they might say, screw it, we're doing, like, we're launching two at a time where we're going to try to do orbital refilling on the next flight because now we've got all this time to work

on rendezvous and proximity operations and whatever else might be there. I really think they want to get the necessary steps ready to launch Starlings on this. Like, that seems to be their high-level goal right now. They want to get payload deployment. going, they want to get Repter Relight and Space going. Because once you achieve that point, well, that's where you start to get return on investment. That's really when you're getting something out of this program. I feel like that's what they are like high level chasing right now. Yes, they have some be some other tests, especially with the TPS on recent flights that,

well, they didn't really test because they never get to that point. But they were no like sidelined. Right now, I feel like it's getting, getting it's. Starlink readiness and then just use Starlink mission as test missions. Because once you get to this stage where you launch payloads on this and you basically test after payload deployment, while you're not really losing that much anymore. Especially if you also got booster catching down and props to them. I mean, in the grand context, they're still catching the largest rocket booster as a

mate casually on a regular basis now. If they get that going and they can reuse that, that's probably already a huge amount of the cost. and getting to this economic, a viable scenario for Starship right now feels to me like that's their stretch goal. That's the first get to the first finish line of the 15 finish lines they have ahead of them. But like get this first finish line.

That's interesting context too because every other company on Earth, I feel comfortable making that statement, every other company on Earth would have stripped off the TPS out of all these ships and said, we're just going to be a regular launch vehicle with a reusable booster and we'll come back around to the reusability thing in a year or two when we get, and they never will, right?

They wouldn't circle back and do it. They would just launch Starship as this thing. But the fact that they haven't yet, I think, is notable. The minute that they put, all right, we're just going to do a second stage on top of this thing with a giant, a huge payload bay and a giant regular faring. And it just looks like a huge falcon. I think that's the minute I would worry of like, okay, but they lost the plot on why they're doing this. So I would make that my canary in the coal mine with your context of like, no,

Starlink is a, and that's a clear gating element because it is, you know, future Starlinks that are going to make that business more viable do require the size of Starship, which is, could be tough, could be a tough, and that's why, you know, that they developed different versions of the Starlink buses to allow for this schedule, you know, confliction. It's fun times, man. You're busy. Absolutely. I mean, I just started writing our update for this weekend because we are doing like a weekly, like, update on what's happening. And honestly, it's kind of crazy that you would think we talk mostly about Massey's

repairs. But what I mostly talk about is about the fact that they are building a huge gigabay now and are building, like, doing a foundation for one of the biggest rocket factory building of all times after the VAB. Maybe they're about the shift to say, hey, we're not getting the ship back. We're just got to make a bunch of them. Yeah, it's like, it's, oh, it's. So much is this program as like so many this program is bigger than most other rockab companies combined at this point basically in terms of workforce and the amount of work they can get done in a single week is insane.

It is that's why I'm always hesitant to say for example, is it two to three months to test for the next flight? Because this is still SpaceX we are talking about. They could do a very stupid, oh, stupid, yeah, very ambitious thing. put this thing on like a test stand put a hook some abilicals up to it static fired on concrete whatever yeah we did it before they've done worse

yeah yeah this is not the worst thing it's not even making the top 10 of the worst things they have done with stars we'll go back to the tents no problem we're moving outside when we went when you took the ships inside that's when all the problems started back to the tents boys

you know yeah but just bring out like get to get to Walmart we are getting back to the good old floating things for a raptors Get the tiny homes out of there, you know, just camping only. Yeah. I feel like there's a good chance there. What tells you they will even static fire before the next flight? Like, a very crazy thought here, but do you think there's an engineered SpaceX right now that is like, you know, before we don't fly them, why not fly them just without the static fire?

Just launch it. That's true. Launch it and catch it. Yeah. Put a little test cone on there. and let's see what happens. I mean, they think, you know, one day they want to ship it to other launch sites like that, right? Yeah, I mean, never doubt...

Try it now. Never doubt SpaceX ability to do something you really didn't expect as a news reporter. One other thing that you maybe didn't or did expect was this observation that happened mere minutes before we went on air. This is not a replay from several years ago when they had an observation. This is a new, the B-O-L-E, the bowl. What's it? The booster, something life extension was the O. Yeah, something life extension.

I always saw, oh, I'll forget the O. Observation Life Extension. Apparently O's for observation. I didn't watch this. This is my first viewing of this. So can you give me a rundown and what happened here? Yeah, it's happened a bit earlier, I think, but I will look at it. Oh, it already missed it?

Yeah, the nozzle liberates at some point. get me... Like immediately? Let me... I feel like I was pretty long. Give me a second. I'm getting you the timestamp. Oh, it's near the end of the test. Sorry. I figured it didn't go on too long.

Look at these pans that's doing, though. There we go. Is that a side angle? That would be an epic view of this thing if that's where it's happening. How long is this text? How long is you scrolling? Scroll in, uh, that's great. That's, Nuzzle is stated there.

Let's track it. Nozzle's still there. How about that? What is it? They must have this might already happen because they zoomed out. So. Oh, that could be. 1.10 is I'm getting 1.10.

Let's go to, now I'm doing math. That's like just under two minutes. Let's see. Just under two minutes. That's past two minutes. You guys do very long live streams. Here we go. Is that really, you get this side angle?

This is crazy. Okay, there apparently it's only... I like that whoever I called out in the chat for telling us that we're bishing about SpaceX too much is getting attacked in the chat. Everybody would be nice. I don't know what's going on down there, but there we go. There it was, Adrian. Holy crap.

There we go. Oh, man. Yeah, oh, they cut away immediately. You can see the little minor sub-exposure there. So you're, all right, what's up with the nozzles here? This is like a Vulcan-like situation. Yeah, I mean, it's just, I feel like. observation was with the omega booster?

Yeah, I feel like lately Novak Bramon just really dislikes nozzles. I mean, it's also, it's Vulcan. It's weird. You would expect at this point that they really have nozzle figured out. I feel like it's kind of their thing for nozzle SRBs.

I mean, I didn't watch this test life. I was also just like getting to. It's like, I did that. I will add this to the list of things I didn't expect to explode in the last two weeks. Didn't know he was getting tested. I haven't been keeping up on the test schedule here for the... Because these are the boosters for like Artemis 8? How far out of these boosters?

This is... Nine? 9, right? Artemis 9, this is hardware that totally will fly it, for sure, for sure. I mean, let's be real. Do you think Artemis 9 will fly? I would believe, I would take a bet that something named Artemis 9 flies, but not this Artemis 9. Yeah.

It's a good, it's good branding. I think the biggest problem with the rethinking of NASA, you know, human spaceflight policy over the last years is that we, we've just bailed on a bunch of really good names, right? Like, the Aries Rockets were great names. Constellation is good names, you know, we've shed a lot of good branding in our past. Yeah. It's like you threw away the great name in a project, and now you have to go to, like, the B plan. That's the worst.

That's how you know what's space lock system, because they didn't want to name it. Yeah, like, they're like, yeah, let's, let's like, be careful. That might have been the moment. If they would have just flipped the switch that said SLS is named Aries 5. Like, just we're going, we're doing that name. We had that branding done. But they didn't. Yeah, I mean, honestly, honestly, half of the,

half of the people would not notice the difference between Aries 4 and 5 and SLS, I think. It's, it's fine. I maybe this is for all the commercial availability of such a booster because I bet there's so many commercial companies that they'll be like yeah we need this SRB that's we need this giant

SRB with I mean we could bring bring back Ari's 1 like Ari's 1 that's always that's always a threat I think that it's always teetering on the edge of coming back yeah I always wake up yeah I will always wake up at night

in sweat and I'm in fear that Ari's one comes back like that's my my biggest fear at night that's your biggest fear you're like God what upper stage are they going to put on it though like oh my god you imagine the centaur what about it was a J2X remember that that was a cool looking engine

I was like flying it in Kerbal but yeah it's not not a good rocket I did see you know I was there for aries 1X did you know that you where? I was there I was at that launch. I totally was. How was it to see something fly that is already cancelled?

It was totally bizarre. It was completely surreal and it looked absolutely ridiculous and I hate it, but I love that that's in my brain somewhere. And also remember it toasted the launch pad. It like kicked out and just blasted. It kind of star-based the

was 39B I guess it was at the time. They clean slate it. What did you say earlier? They rapidly adjusted it. and rapidly adjusted launch site So they did a 39B Back in Ares 1 X days Somebody called this the ARI is the Aries 1 moment

Of the Artemis program Because it's a testing hardware That is already not flying I love that wording Because it's like I mean It's not that far off I feel like if you

If you would ask If you ask 100 space journalists today Will this booster ever fly I think more than 90 Would say no This one that we're watching get tested? No, no, I mean, in general, this

kind of booster design. So you're, you don't think, well, two and three are going, right? Yeah, but then they're saying, all the other ones are going to museums, is your point. I mean, this one is for nine. This one's for nine. That's a lot. There's no way 16 of these, or 14

solid rock boosters go. Yeah. If they, if they go for like five and six, yes, but these new upgraded boosters are not flying before nine. Also, I like that you're getting called out for your overestimation of there being 100 space journalists. So there might be. There might be.

It's like one of these social media posts with like, name 100 space journalists. Yeah, yeah. I bet we can do it. We have way more interesting topics for the back end of the show than that. But I bet we can do it. We'll do it in the, we'll do it later on. We'll make a little list. Can we talk about European policy?

I need you to help me sort through what's going on here. Oh, there's a lot. There's like multiple constellations. There's this whole ESA European Commission negotiation back and forth on which constellations are ESA and which are European Commission and what about the countries that are not in one but not the other. And a lingering question that I thought was going to get resolved last ministerial was what do we do about human spaceflight? And that question is even more so now. So you pick pick of the litter for what are you watching most going into the ministerial? general budget question

my general question is what kind of slack are we picking up from NASA science programs basically imploding because the wording of the director general recently has been a bit of we will have as much as I understand it is there are different agendas for the ministerial depending on how NASA

decides about their budget so I'm wondering which programs Coming up in November, they better not hope when I have it a budget, because I don't think we're going to have a budget for them when they get to the ministerial. Yeah, I think the latest update from Issa was they expect the budget to hit about a week before the ministerial, which I'm like, oh, optimistic. That's in time. No way. I really think right now Issa is flying on like at least three different plans, maybe four. and it all depends on not only the U.S. politics, but also the European politics, because we had recently a lot of shifts in a lot of governments in Europe.

We, of course, last year was a bit of a disaster for the budget because it actually got less, especially from the big ones. We now have, I mean, Germany has the one, what was it, one trillion dollar fund package that was, which 500 billion are for military purposes. So these could also be theoretically space stuff. So there's so much movement right now in terms of money, but nobody's really committing to space, which is the weird thing.

It's like, okay, we have all of this money. How much of space again? Like, how are we doing for space? And nobody's kind of answering the question. It's like just throwing into the room and after that it's silence. And I feel like that's the biggest problem. And I think one of the huge problems we are right now seeing is that Isar is noticing that you cannot build up a reliable space

industry in a year, which everybody told them like 10 years ago. And now we basically have one launcher that is not really up to cadence. We didn't properly fund all the smaller companies. They got their like 50 million contracts. And then we wonder why we don't have a Falcon 9 competitor in Europe. And that's the bad situation right now they're in. And of course, for politics, it's so hard to justify money on space right now because you have a million other issues

that also deserve money right now. So welcome to the huge confusing budget problems of Europe where nobody kind of has money for space, but there is money, but nobody wants to spend it on space. And I also lost track who's increasing and who is decreasing money at this point. It's so in the air.

With the exception of the launcher that hadn't gotten up the cadence, I felt similarly seen as, like, oh, we wonder why we don't have a Falcon 9 competitor and we're underfunding all these other options? Because there are some, like, U.S. politicians that feel the same, that feel like that's in the same spot. $500 billion defense package feels like your, what would your branding be? Brandenburg Dome? Like, what would your branding be for a crazy misdistance program that's going to clearly be trillions of dollars? Because we got one of those. So it doesn't feel totally

off from where we are. We just, we have a rug that we keep. pulling out from under the ESA science programs that were like, we're going to do a Mars project together, no, we're not going to do a Mars project together. You're going to fly a rover, no, we're not doing that. So, that part is different. And also there's this absolute stupid move that

I can now call this stupid. Issa attached themselves to NASA as closely as they could over the last 20 years and we're like hugging every single program that NASA has and was like, oh, we can totally help you. Here takes optics for this program. And now we are noticing, well, if NASA cancels like everything, we have nothing. Like, we are, yes, there are some projects that we run independently, but most of the project are cooperation with NASA.

So you're suddenly in a situation where, well, what can we run on our own? Gateway is the biggest example. There's so much contribution in Gateway, and there was so much, oh, we're telling, giving you Gateway for that we're getting free astronauts to the moon. That's totally a cool deal. and now gateway is cancelled and Artemis becomes more of a signature project without any science meaning and they will be like if we don't contribute gateway if nobody takes gateway get we do we get the astronauts to the moon i don't know i don't anybody else knows you got the service module which i guess is the barter is our i s s time is the barter for that though right so you got to get that organaut thing up and

running the argonaut thing yeah the argonaut thing that totally didn't was some suddenly made up because we really needed a bargaining chip. That was like, oh, we also have Argonaut. We do? I mean, if we don't have anything at the moment, then yeah. I mean, if you do have all the pressure vessels, right? Like, we ain't got a commercial space station

industry in this country unless Tally Zelina is going to be shipping us pressure vessels. That's kind of how it feels. As long as Turin is in Europe, we have every single pressure vessel in the vest. You could like, you know, just export tax the shit out of that and then fund

Issa off of every pressure vessel that's coming over. I was there like six months ago. That was the craziest facility I think I've ever visited in my life. Tell us the scale or what? Just exquisiteness? What was your, what was crazy? So first, the main production hall of their pressure vessels is like an empty, almost like where you would assemble dirty trains a bit.

Like you wouldn't expect this to be a pressure vessel assembly. everything in space is like clean and white and Talas has like this old factory hall and they're like yeah next to the old machines that's where we assemble the space stations and they're like what? Of course then to be fair that's like the main

modules and then they polish them yeah but it's like it's such a crazy production and you have people there that then are like yeah yeah I worked on like every single ISS module ever launched from the West okay and it's just this crazy heritage place because you know that same factory hall

that I'm making a joke about probably produced half the ISS so easily yeah yeah yeah so absolutely crazy and there's don't leak there's a good man I mean there was parts of the Axiom station was just lying around while I was there

oh yeah I was not allowed how did it seem like it was coming any good schedule of on that one? Seems a bit early, but to a total surprise, it also looked like a sickness. Everything kind of looks like, everything is a sickness I learned, basically. It's like, Northrop Grumman thinks. They're like, new program.

I bet that looks like a sickness. We'll throw our... But how could we modify sickness to make this work? I should use Cygnus as the nozzle. If they did that. But it's an absolutely crazy facility with... incredibly skilled and talented people and I love to be there and they're so

friendly they're so open I was like next to Gateway I could touch Gateway they were like yeah no problem it's the structural module it holds micro satellites it's micro asteroids you should be able to touch it did you did you touch the you didn't touch oh you didn't okay nice you Mike Penn

I did they were like yeah they were like you can totally touch this the thing is that this is the structural module it's basically a giant steel tube if this doesn't hold when you touch it then we would like to know. Yeah, so go ahead. Yeah, but if this collapse is if you touch it, that's a good test.

Thank you for that test, yeah. All right, so riddle me this, because this was my, I don't know if you've heard my crackpot theory on what ESA should do in the human spaceflight department. I'm looking forward. I don't know, like, I want you to sort through the budget side of this for me, because I think 2022, there was, wasn't that when there was like the op-ed from the ESA astronauts of like, we should do a human space flight thing?

that might have been maybe even last year or the year before that they're... I think it was 2023 or 24. I think it was more recent. And they're targeting... So there was some campaign and targeting an upcoming ministerial to be like, this is our moment, we should take it seriously. I don't think a crew vehicle is a good idea. It's not going to go well.

It's too expensive. You got launch for problems. I guess you would put it on top of an Aryan 6 or something. I don't even know what you would really do. And I don't, the budget's definitely not there for it and convincing everybody that should be there is not not there for it. But you all got all these space station modules. And we're having a really terrible time funding space stations over here because we have the ISS and we don't care about funding commercial space stations, apparently, above thinking that NASA shouldn't be the anchor customer, but these companies' business cases only working when NASA is the anchor customer. So I was like, all right, let's just do a little simple math here.

ESA fund a ISS follow-on space station program, generate themselves some work in the pressure vessel department, give themselves a destination to be the center anchor tenant there. They kind of flip the script and they're like, NASA, you want to have crew time while you're working on all the Artemis stuff, fly on over to the ESA space station. And I think funding wise, based on what we've been requesting for commercial space station programs over here, it's like in range of an ESA-funded program, much more so than a new human-rated launch vehicle spacecraft program. I'm looking at the ESA budget right now and how it's currently spent it. So right now, wow, we pay $1 billion a year for space transportation for what?

We had... I don't know. I really don't know. What is that for? Yeah. What's what we're getting for what that $1 billion, by the way? You're buying those Russian diamond-encrusted Mercedes, I think. what accounts

space transportation. So apparently Earth observation is 1.6 like the overall I would say non the non let's say the operational side of the budget is more like 4 billion

which is like very very small versus what NASA is doing so let's be real unless something majorly chains in Europe we can we cannot pick up everything here. I like I also like the idea of not doing a human spaceflight capsule because I think we would, I agree with you. It would be extremely expensive. It would probably take decades and we'd fail.

I really think ESA right now needs to find very smart partnerships that are not just attachments, but like smart, hey, we do something that you actually need. I agree with you there with a proposal. and I think we really need a reusable rocket. I really think we should spend these $1 billion. If we don't do it right now, please spend it on getting a reusable rocket because it's, we talk about these constellations and let's build this Stalin on our own. We kind of need a reusable rocket for that.

We cannot fly this on Area N6. Cadence is one problem, but cost us the other. Because apparently we are paying $1 billion for the current capacity. It's not a good deal. That's funny too, though, the constellation thing, because you have, you have, like, you know, especially on the defense side. I don't know what you're going to do with the defense slush fund over there that you're talking about. But, you know, there's French high-resolution imaging constellations.

You've got a lot of commercial options these days. And I know, like, currently there's geopolitic tensions, right? Just like, not only just on the NASA side, obviously, greater. geopolitics too, but like, I mean, I don't feel dumb for being like, this is kind of a temporary situation. And I think we all know at the end of day we're going to remain friends. And sometimes you fight with your friends in weird ways and you get mad at each other. But like, we're not going to go make friends with other people too quickly. I think we'll be all right. And the speed at which space policy in Europe seems to move, the, the, the, the, the, the,

situation will be entirely different by the time they get to the next decision point. I mean, I think that's cool that ministerial is over three years. Like, if NASA operated on a every three-year budget, I think that would work better than the current policy, which is a budget, and then a continuing resolution for a year, and then a budget, and then that's not good. So I do like the every three years we're going to think about it kind of thing. I just, it's, I don't know. I mean, even when you're talking about the launcher side of things, right?

when you're saying, like, we need a reusable launcher. Are you thinking more on the vein of, like, all right, we got to get off the Aryan space situation and make sure that we've got viable competitors coming up that are thinking about reusability? I don't know what you're, you know, knowing where the smaller launchers are now and knowing where Aryan space is, what do you, how do you, how would you play that? If you were, if you were like King for a day, what would you do with the launcher situation? GIF.

I guess also start with your priors on that. Like, what do you actually want? want out of European launch. What do you find... What do you find the importance of it? How should it be positioned? I think we need two things. We need a way to launch to space from Europe properly.

We need like a developed spaceport that can launch medium to large size rocket. I'm talking like 5 to 10 tons range. So we can launch like stuff like the Galileo satellites or Sentinel. We can launch these kind of things on our own. And I think we need a launch that can do that with a reusable, applicable program. So I think the optimal way to approach that would be in a well-beda-batchett would be there to have two or three companies compete for that.

For that, you would need give them, we are talking about probably 500 mils per company. We have talked about these numbers before, and that's also a ballpark that got SpaceX going. So we cannot give these, like sometimes we have these studies that are giving out, and they are like, oh, here's 20 million to explore the reusable launch. sure. It's seed funding.

It's seed funding is what it is. Yeah. It's like that gets you something that gets you a paper of like the problem is yes, you get a paper out of that that says we would need this money to make this. Well then that's where the study

dies. That's where then nobody pays 500 million for it. And I think having like a reusable launcher in a 5 to 10 tons range, I'm not delusional. I know we won't develop Starship in Europe. Like, I know that. And that's fine for me.

But I think we need at least some partial capability here. I mean, we're not developing any other starships here. Yeah, that's true. There's just Starship, right? Like, all the other ones, Neutron, New Glenn, even, right? They're not starships. So, yeah, I wouldn't put that as the gating element. I think the interesting aspect for you is that I think you're somebody who's obviously

seen the way that SpaceX has gone. but on a local level, right, I was in college in Orlando in 2009 to 2011. It was the entire talk of like local media was shuttle shutting down. What are all these people going to do? And I remember there was a forum post on NASA spaceflight way back in the day. I should try to dig this up. I remember this post so distinctly in my brain because it was the thing I knew would happen and it was just typed out beautifully.

I forget who it was, I got to find this. But it was somebody who worked on shuttle till the very, last day, was there when they turned out the lights, when they shipped the last one off to the museum, was like crying, didn't know what they would do. And a year, two years later, whatever it was, they were back at 39A redoing it for SpaceX. And they were like, I'm sitting in my Jeep, I'm looking at 39A, I'm back, things are different now, it's going to be a great future. And that was the vibe shift at the time. And it was a leap of faith then that like, no, no, we see a way that industry can, like, these people aren't going to disappear. They're not going to just be gone.

Things will fill this gap, and we have this plan in place. And that was true in many aspects. This far on, when you see how much has built up around Kennedy Space Center, and you drive through that area where there's, like, the one web factory in the Blue Origin factory, and you've got all the Starship stuff, you've got the thing on the way to the Saturn 5 Center that SpaceX is working on, you see all this industry burgeoning around that same workforce. That's the message I would sell to people that think, like, it can only be airy in space. It's like, Well, these people in Europe that are working on launch vehicles, they want to work on launch vehicles. It doesn't, you know, like that, that's not going to go away. That urge is not going to go away.

So if you did Indiana Jones swap in, right, a competitive program like you're talking about, those people will find roles in those new programs. And I agree. Yeah, it's, it's, it is possible to do that. And I also think the engineering is here. Like, I don't, like, I always hear talk of like, oh, we don't have a like a robust. decade-long space industry. Yeah, that's true. But rockets are in essential still machines. And I think in Europe, we have experienced engineers. We have capable engineers that could develop these kind of projects. You just need to have the money. So they don't work on any

other industry. They choose to go to the space industry. And that's the money and the interest you need to get there. And I'm sure there's a person right now working on cars and or working on other, I don't know, weapon systems. And it's like, I would love to work on an orbital launch rocket. But it's just not that easy. Yeah. And even there's the aspects, too, like, I said this on a couple shows ago, that growing up, I didn't go into the space industry

because there was nothing near me. I didn't want to move to where they were. And it was also super boring in the 90s. It wasn't inspiring to, like, a 10-year-old kid that was thinking, like, what I want to be, right? And then someone plopped the iPhone to my hand. And I was like, oh shit, that's what I want to do. I want to make iPhone apps.

I want to make websites. I want to do software. If I was growing up and I was 10 when SpaceX has landed Falcon 9s on boats, like 100% I'm in on that, right? Same thing. Everyone who talks about the Apollo moments where they're like, I'm six years old watching Neil Armstrong, walk on the moon. So when there's a void of that when that's not happening, there's no excitement to go into it. So you're exactly right. There's great engineers in Europe that are just finding the other interesting things.

I got into cycling during the pandemic. the amount of like engineering nerds that are designing aerodynamics on bikes. I'm like, I bet some of these are space nerds. I bet they listen to this show. Like, if you do, by the way, hit me up because I probably need a new bike. But like it's nerds are nerds. And they're going to find fun things that interest them to work on. I don't really think any nerds are being like, man, Aryan 6.

Who, like, what a thing I want to work on. I would have 100% go to the space industry if I knew about it earlier. I learned about SpaceX and Falcon Heavy. landing like six months into my training as a banking professional. And I was kind of committed at the point, but what are going to do? Well, I turned it around a bit and now I'm a spaceflight journalist. Here you are. One of the hundred. Yeah, one of the hundred spaceflight journalists, apparently. But it's, I wish I knew about it earlier. I would have totally studied engineering. Because the only reason I didn't was because I didn't want to work in a car industry. Because I don't

find cars very inspiring. And yeah. I'm with you on that. I bet there's other car guy. Yeah. Yeah. Totally not. There's two things I'm not nerds about. There's like cars and trains and I'm like, man, I don't really get being into them. And then I'm super into rockets. And I was like, oh, I see. Like I get it. I'm just not one of those. Yeah, not one of those ones. It's like, it's like the nerd skill tree. You have to like this different nerd stuff and you

have to like put points into something. And I also didn't put point to the cars and trains. The train ones, man, they're wild. there's it's crazy there's some channels on YouTube it's these moments where you notice that when we at NSF stock like every single rocket on this planet

you notice that is true for almost every industry in the world like there's an NSF of trains it's so crazy I love the internet and then you find those and you're like oh man wow like look at these weirdos and then you're like oh shit I'm doing that

in all my weird things too I'm the weirdo. I am the weirdo. You're the weirdo. You totally are. You guys are like, wow, look at this new sheet metal they've got. Yeah. This has six holes instead of five before.

That means blog two. Yeah, look at this thing. They spray painted on it. It's like, that was just somebody waiting for their next shipment to come in and they had a kind of paint and they were bored and they like painted a piece of pie on this thing, although that one was cool. The pie one was nice. What's your favorite of the Star Base random messages that had been spray painted on something?

I like the, not necessarily spray paint, but I like when they are Repter transport vehicles. We're having Mario Card characters. So basically you had Mario Card characters driving around transporting Raptors. That was insanely funny to me. I love the div, I love the banana on the one of the vehicles. So they just decide to, yeah, like it's banana time now. I guess. I hate their inconsistency.

I hate the insconsistency with vehicle paint, though. Not every... Why are only the ships having the vehicle numbers on them? And why only some of them? Give me the numbers on the boosters as well. Make them bigger. I want big numbers on these ships. That makes them way more than defiable.

Yeah, I mean, maybe... It's not like they're hiding much. I would seem to say that maybe they want to do a little shell game, but like... They're not hiding anything. I like how they started promoting that, too. On the live streams, they're like... If you want to come see, just drive down the road. They've actually started calling that out.

Yeah, it's like... Which is good. Yeah, they would want to promote that. I mean, let's be real. There are people that identify Falcon 9 boosters on the dust pattern that is on them. I really think SpaceX is not able to hide any serial number from us. Definitely not. Definitely not. Well, I feel good about this, Adrian.

I like your vision for European spaceflight. I would put you in charge of that. I would... Thank you. fly over. I'll be in charge of the space station program, if you would like. I heard you running for NASA Administrator. I am actively running for NASA administrator. Yeah, I'm not even, I think I started out kidding.

And now I'm like, this might be my shot, man. I'm serious now. Now I'm 100% serious. I would totally do it. I don't know if you heard my pitch, but this is the best time to be the NASA administrator. The stakes are clear. Your mission is set. If you make it a month, you made it a lot longer than the last guy. and any positive momentum that you provide

is welcomed by the industry. I mean, honestly, at this point, having a NASA administrator in general would be great, I think. Yeah. Like somebody that actually does it, that's... I'll do it, man.

It doesn't look like anyone wants to do it right now. I'll totally do it. And also, it's a great show. If I just went and I did a nomination hearing and then I got bounced before I was actually NASA admin, that's also fun. Probably less fun than I would think of it is. I feel like I kind of wanted...

I feel like Jared kind of wanted to do it, just didn't get to it because, well, hand wave politics. Yeah. Man, that boy is going to be doing interesting things. I mean, I'm totally off topic, but I think overall this might be a win for spaceflight because I think at NASA, I mean, let's be real with that budget. You cannot do anything anyway. But now we have Jared back in spaceflight. We'll see. Let's make a Polaris that is actually like let's go out of us.

We have Polaris. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he got martyred. You're totally right. If he, if he got confirmed, was there for two months and then realized what was in front of him and quit or got fired or whatever, like that's a worse outcome than a week before he's confirmed, like, you know, politically martyred over this. It's kind of crazy. Yeah, I hope it channels like an inner rage to make like the best space program ever out of Polaris. Like, that's my hope. Like, Jared just going full in to Polaris. and just let's do it. So at first it was like, he had that interview with Burger, which was like, maybe politics,

maybe I'll get into politics. I don't know, will be my senator or something from New Jersey. But then a recent, more recent interview, I forget who with, you may remember, was more floating the idea of like,

yeah, maybe I will fund a science mission, which I think, if he's going to do anything, fund a private lander on Mars and just go for it. Like, fund a space telescope. Just pick,

pick one of the flagship missions. If you're going to do, because you figure Polaris, in terms of investment, is up in those flagship class investments. Maybe not the Curiosity rover, $4 billion or whatever, but a couple hundred mil is definitely what Polaris. Do you think Polaris was into the bees? I think for sure. Especially if you, I mean, Polaris, I bet is a bit different because I think SpaceX has some

significant investment in that, that they would not disclose this investment. Right, right. But I don't think they make any profit on Polaris. I think Polaris is very much a SpaceX reputation project together with Jared. So there is some cost in there that technically is not cost, but just SpaceX not charging for it. That's true. But you don't develop like a space suit for a lot less than one bill. And then the flights alone are like right, even if they're not even if they're charging for it.

The flights alone are 200 mil or whatever it is. right so yeah i mean someone said viper in the chat that's a brilliant brilliant idea just buy viper say oh i'm taking the commercial maybe that's why they cancelled that viper proposal thing they were like oh it jared wanted to buy it

uh that would be awesome at this point we have to find something that the chinese won't do first because i think at this point that might be a lot uh because march sample return i think at this point is like

locked in chinese Um, wow, all right. Everything. Yeah, we'll see. You might get it with your new, your new crazy ministerial meeting with the slush funds that you're putting out there. No. I think I had a, I had a short lack. Sorry, I'm back.

Oh, I'm just giving you crap about your ESA budget. It's a cute little budget. Yeah, like seven builds. Like, that's, that's one SLS. Listen, man, we got nine boosters worth that we're cooking up here. So, you know, take it easy, would you? We have delivered the fifth service module, I think. We'll deliver the fifth service module very soon.

I appreciate that very much. I look forward to whatever museum that ends up in would just be. It's going to be a wonderful exhibit. Yeah, should we already plan for every part of Artemis after Artemis 3 to just distribute it? We'll make our list of journalists. We'll figure out where these are all going. And you guys can do a live stream about it sometime. So can you plug NASA.

the spaceflight for people that somehow are watching this and have not experienced what's going on there. I mean, we are a bunch of rocket nerds that love to cover everything in space. Today, we, for example, covered the bowl test. We just love to be at every single launch. And we also have a website that have constantly filled with articles. We do, I think the one format I was sure want to plug is Twist this weekend spaceflight. We do that every single Friday. and it's a new show constantly updating through everything that is happening in the week of spaceflight. I think it's one of the best things we produce right now. So if you have time, do that.

And besides that, well, check out the channel. You will find something that you like about spaceflight. It's truth and often the best videos of things we didn't expect to have to be watching. It's frequently, if something crazy happened, I'm like, Twitter. com, and that's a spaceflight. They probably have a clip. I'm going to check it out. So.

always. You do too. You know, we're doing our thing and we're just running for head of NASA over here is primarily what we're doing now. This is my campaign show, and we'll see how that goes. You wanted to write

like a book? Because you kind of need to write also like a manifest book about NASA, right? Like the NASA Vision. Yeah. I can do it, man. I think I'm actually got a better shot at the ESO space station program. So I'm going to do that one first because that seems...

That one seems more likely to me than me running NASA. We should run for both agencies. You run NASA, I run ESA. Now we're talking. We want it perfect. Hell yeah. That's the best plan. Vote for us, wherever your ballot boxes are, vote for us.

This is now a political show for administration, I guess. If we run both organizations, we'll keep doing this. This will be how we sort it out. That's our promise to you. campaign promise, there will be a weekly podcast that discusses NASA and Isa. And we negotiate geopolitics. Perfect. Let's do it.

We might want to launch that anyway. Would you imagine having a podcast of like actual politicians on a weekly basis? It would be so funny. I mean, yeah, it would probably not go great places. But all right, y'all, Jake's still away. I think I'll have a show for you next week, potentially tape delayed, because I'm going to be away on the third and then we've got a week off

on the 10th and Jake will be back beyond that so we're getting into our weird little summer break so yeah I don't know what's coming up on this but we'll find out what happens in Adrian thank you so much

everybody else we'll see you later thanks for having me